LONDON--Police have arrested two women at an British airport after they reportedly tried to smuggle a corpse onto a flight Saturday.

Gitta Jarant, 66, and her daughter, Anke Anusic, 41, both German nationals, were arrested at Liverpool’s John Lennon Airport on suspicion of “failing to give notification of death” for Jarant’s husband, Curt Jarant, police said Tuesday.

British media reported the women placed the man into a wheelchair and covered his face with sunglasses in a bid to get him aboard a flight to Berlin.

Airport worker Andrew Millea said he knew the man was dead upon the group’s arrival to the airport, when he helped move the man into a wheelchair.

“I did my best to help by carefully lifting the man from his seat,” Millea told The Daily Telegraph. “To my horror, his face fell sideways against mine. It was ice-cold . . . but they reassured me that he ‘always sleeps like that.’ ”

The women were released. No charges have been laid as the probe continues.

“Of course we did not know he was dead,” Anusic told the BBC, saying he was “pale but he wasn’t dead” when the trio left their home in Greater Manchester. “He was moving, he was breathing, eight people saw him."

She added, “How can you bring a dead person to Germany?”

But police said the man died the day before the flight. It is believed the women, who had arrived at the airport by taxi with the body, were attempting to evade the complex and costly process of repatriating human remains abroad.

this is one of those stories that is quite sad and kinda hilarious all at once, but in the end, mostly sad.

it sounds completely ridiculous at first but when i think about it, doing something like that isn't all that wild...i mean if you're grieving and unable to afford it you probably just wanna get everyone home with as little fuss (and money) as possible.